


Harel Shiral

by spacetango



Series: A Shrine, Or Else a Scar [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, Eventual Smut Possible, F/M, Halamshiral Shenanigans, Lavellan Plays The Game, Rating May Change, Slow Build, Solavellan, The Angst That is Solavellan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3415478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacetango/pseuds/spacetango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How can Lavellan reconcile her growing suspicions Solas is not all he seems with her feelings for him? If she's right, playing with fire might be easier. And safer. Not that she's one for safe.</p><p>Set after Adamant, concludes with the Halamshiral ball.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Inquisitor's New Clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walk, walk, fashion baby. Or not, as the case may be. The bad romance is real tho. That's what makes it so good.

Had this morning happened two months ago, the resemblance between the tea cup in her hand the too precious dress Josephine had dragged to her quarters would have been amusing. This morning, however, was a morning whose wakefulness was wrenched from the grasp of that leaden, pre-dawn sleep insomnia bestowed. A morning composed of bleary eyes, tea so strong it scraped her taste buds, and thoughts buzzing around like bees in one of Sera’s jars. A morning like most mornings after Adamant, in fact. Llyrae Lavellan gave up trying to mask her grimace.

“No. Absolutely not,” she said. As if on cue, the swift morning breeze coming in through the open windows fluffed the glittering froth of ruffles. “I am not wearing that.”

“Inquisitor, you will have to contend with the entire Imperial court. When in Orlais—” Josephine let the phrase hang.

When in Orlais, do as the Orlesians do. It had been the constant subtext, and in two cases the very ridiculous and explicit text, of every Orlesian history book she read in preparation for the Halamshiral ball, and it set her teeth on edge. “I said no. If you think, just for one bloody moment, I’m going to the Winter Palace wearing the spawn of an Orlesian bed and a puff pastry, you haven’t grasped two basic facts. One: that style doesn’t suit me. Two: I’m Dalish.”

“That’s not— I didn’t mean—”

“I’m sorry, Josephine,” she said. Josephine didn’t deserve either her ire, or her derision. “I truly am. But I am not wearing that. The subject is closed.” Which was vain hope, she knew, but it felt good to stalk out of her quarters on the heels of such a final statement.

She spent the rest of the morning perched on the scaffolding in the rotunda, drinking a slightly less aggressive breed of tea, and watching Solas put the finishing touches on the Adamant fresco. As always, she found herself caught between fascination and unease when contemplating the angular, stylized images he so effortlessly created. Not for the first time since they escaped the Fade, she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, as if the answers she craved, to questions she wasn’t even certain she wanted to ask, were nothing more than leaves falling off a sapling. And a sapling, Solas was not.

“Bad night, vhenan?” His back was turned, and his tone light.

“What makes you think I had a bad night?”

“That’s the third cup of tea you’ve started,” he said, filling in a burnt umber shadow with swift, precise strokes, “and the way you’re bouncing your foot makes the wood creak every three seconds. Given your question, I’m going to guess it wasn’t a bad night, but a trying morning.”

Llyrae’s hand clenched around her tea cup, the impulse to shake him stronger than ever. “Given your tone, I’m going to guess you knew about what Josephine dragged up to my quarters this morning.”

“I most certainly did not, but I now have good guesses as to what it might have been.”

“You do, do you?” Insomnia and tea made her reckless. If he would ambush her with his deductions, then she would ambush him with the intimacy they usually reserved for the occasional night in camp, though even those hadn’t been immune to the poisoned shadow Nightmare’s words had cast. She jumped off the scaffolding, and closed on him until she felt the heat of her breath against the blade of his ear. “Tell me about it, Solas.”

The slight tremor in his arm didn’t reach his voice. “We have an audience, vhenan,” he said, but he had stopped painting.

“Mmm, so we do,” she said, her lips brushing his skin. Satisfied with his sharp intake of breath, she mastered the urge to rake her teeth across the back of his neck, and added, “Unfortunately for them, I have to go practice bardic basics with Sister Nightingale.”

His laugh as she was leaving was, as always, elegant, if a touch shaky. “It will only delay the Lady Ambassador so long,” he said.

#

Indeed, the subject of the Orlesian ball gown was far from closed, and came up two days later during the afternoon strategy meeting. Leliana, this time, on whom Josephine was clearly pinning all hopes, if her anxious glance to the Spymaster was any indication.

“Josephine mentioned you aren’t enchanted by Orlesian court dress,” Leliana began once operations were assigned. Next to her, Cullen shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his usual tell that he found the topic uncomfortable, though he made no move to exit the room. A united front, then. They were hitting her with a united front.

“Should I have been?”

“Of course not, Inquisitor. I was just curious what your alternative would be?”

“Alternative.” Not a question, an impatient retort.

“Well, yes. You can’t attend a ball in your field armor.”

Llyrae held back a sigh, and bought herself a few moments to order her thoughts by returning a stray bronze marker to its box. Leliana was, of course, correct. “I am not attending it wearing Orlesian dress, either. We’re going to foil an assassination attempt, not show up the court dandies. Besides,” she added with a tinge of satisfaction at seeing Cullen’s expression. The front was not so united, after all. “If we’re making a statement just by being there, then my wearing that _thing_ is the wrong message to send.”

“But Inquisitor—”

“Wait, Josephine.” Leliana’s voice held the peculiar softness that said she was enjoying herself, a tell of a different sort than Cullen’s. “Inquisitor?”

So, then: the gown had been a test. “You said it yourself,” Llyrae said as she methodically took the war chits back out of the box, “that nuance is the heart of the Game.”

“So it is.”

“Then let’s play the Game the way it’s meant to be played. If I show up in Orlesian dress, I’m practically acknowledging the superiority of Orlais, when in fact, it is Orlais who needs my help.” She arranged the cast bronze fists in a row as she spoke. “We’re saying that the Inquisition does not think enough of itself to appear as its own entity. And, because I’m Dalish, we’re also saying that we implicitly condone what Orlais has done to my people, especially since I’ll be sweeping in with Duke Gaspard on my arm.”

“All well and good, Inquisitor, but what is the alternative?”

She swept the markers up in her fist, and trained her glance on Leliana. “Why not armor? The schematics are easily enough adapted. We’ll make it ceremonial, so no one’s offended. Maybe dip the feathers on my pauldrons in gold gilt,” she added, curious to see how Leliana would approach the challenge, “for extra flair.”

“This could work,” said Josephine, whose worried expression had lifted. She paced and gestured as she spoke, relief coloring her speech more and more with each successive word. “We still have enough time to get this together. I can see it: silk brocade for the sleeves, an embroidered Inquisition crest in gold thread. No, no—silver. Embossed leather gauntlets, with a leaf motif. I know just the pattern.”

“No, Josie.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

Llyrae offered a taut smile, mostly to expiate the guilt she felt for giving Josephine false hope the matter would be so easily resolved. “Leliana means to say that none of that would work for the armor I have in mind.”

“But of course it would. Oh!” Josephine paused in mid-gesture. “Feathered pauldrons. You meant Dalish armor.” She regarded Leliana and Llyrae in turn with an unreadable glance. “If this is quite finished,” she said at length, “then maybe we can resolve this matter once and for all.”

“Agreed.” Cullen broke his silence at last. “What blasted difference does it make who wears what?”

“But it does matter, as the Inquisitor already explained. Just as Orlesian regalia would send the wrong message, so would Dalish finery, no matter how finessed.”

“Leliana’s right.” Llyrae tossed the war markers back in the box, where they fell with a dull clatter. The weariness of the past few months, all the etiquette lessons, the dance practice, the endless memorization of Orlesian noble houses and their incestuous web of machinations, had turned into a tight knot between her shoulder blades. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to tear through enemy ranks with lightning, Solas at her back. Ironic, since he was the true cause of her tension. _Harellan_ , Nightmare had said. A measured breath, then: “If I show up dressed like the Dalish I am, then I’m saying the Inquisition is biased. Whatever trust could be gained at the Winter Palace will be impeded by centuries worth of prejudice and hate.”

“Maker’s breath! They’re fools if they let that get in the way of seeing your worth.” And with a self-conscious flush that escaped no one’s notice, he quickly added, “Inquisitor.”

“My worth isn’t the concern here.”

“I think you and Leliana are complicating this,” Cullen said, again shifting his weight. He even rubbed the back of his neck. “But maybe I’m biased. In the Order, in the army, everyone wears the same thing, more or less.”

Whatever she wanted to say about complications died on her lips. “Wait, that’s it.”

“Yes,” Leliana nodded. “It could work.”

“Of course,” she said over Leliana, well aware that Cullen wasn’t yet following the thrust of their exchange, and that Josephine was starting to envision far more lavish confections than would be practical. “That would be the best message: the Inquisition is neither Orlesian, nor Dalish. It is its own thing, beholden to no other factions.”

“Indeed. Uniforms are ideal,” finished Leliana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The nutcracker outfits are hideous, but the concept behind them makes sense. What doesn't make sense: understanding what Nightmare says, and not having a single option to pursue it. Not that Solas would 'fess up, or anything, but considering how clear all the clues otherwise are, it's frustrating Lavellan can't investigate.
> 
> On the next installment: quality together time.


	2. The Better To Obfuscate With

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas sidesteps oblique questions. It's what he does. Lavellan makes plans to ask better questions. It's what she does.
> 
> Light _Masked Empire_ spoilers.

Llyrae rested her palms on the cold stone railing, closed her eyes, and breathed in the brisk evening air. Though they still hadn’t come to a precise agreement regarding the shape the uniforms would take—dinner in the war room tonight, seasoned with debates on the merits of sash trimmings and embroidered epaulets—they had at last stopped obstructing each other. Progress, in other words, had been made, even if not all points had been given due closure.

Another point without closure: Solas. He'd taken her teasing in the rotunda in stride, but it would be foolish to suppose he hadn't seen it for the clumsy invitation it was. It was, perhaps, time to put the demons of Adamant to rest.

“Enjoying the night, vhenan?” As always, his presence was a faint tug at the edge of her senses. Useless to rely on anything else, noiseless as his tread was.

“Better, now you’re here." Both truth and lie. She shivered, more in response to his proximity than the chill air, and cautiously pushed her back against his chest. A peace offering for the distance she’d put between them, if nothing else.

“I aim to please,” he whispered in her hair, and pulled her closer.

Even through the fabric of her tunic, she could feel the slow and complicated trickle of magic from his jawbone amulet. Once more, impossible, hopeless questions arose in her mind, like vultures circling the carcass of a single word: _harellan_. Were that the only odd thing about Solas, she’d have been content to call it the echoing regret of past mistakes, but it brought so many other discrepancies to the fore that only speculation ruled her thoughts. She turned around in his arms, suddenly hollow with hunger for his mouth on hers.

The kiss was half desire, half frustration, an all consuming need to wrench back the veil he kept over his hidden places. She dug her fingers into his back and pressed him close, as if the heat of their mouths, his hands in her hair, her needful whimper at the feel of him, could obliterate the sharp and awful certainty he was not all he seemed.

“ _Liar_ ,” she breathed at last, her body still rocking against his. “The last thing you want to do is please.”

He laughed his low, urbane laugh. “Maybe I just want to please you,” he said, his voice uneven.

“Do you?” She could have let the question be as honey in her mouth; she chose instead to level it at him the way she’d direct lightning at a foe. It was as close as she dared get to the tangle of secrets she sensed between them, and she couldn’t decide if she was pleased or dismayed to see an undefinable flicker cross his features at her words.

“But,” he said, “I can’t do that if you’ve unfinished business elsewhere.”

“Solas—”

“Go. Let your Spymaster know you are the one who commands the war table.”

She pulled back slowly, aware he was deflecting, and furthermore, that his deflection worked. She’d made no secret of her distaste for that wretched dress, nor of her irritation that Leliana had maneuvered Josephine into the idea, and she couldn’t repress a thrill that he turned her concerns into an evasion. It was almost as good as an admission that she had stirred the deep and placid waters of his secrets.

Not trusting her expression to remain neutral, she retreated into the warm confines of her bedroom. “What,” she said, “march up there, and call her on encouraging Josephine’s notions about proper court wear just to see how much of an apt pupil I am?”

“You want to.”

“What I want is not the same as what is best. That would be an admission she caught me off guard.”

“And she didn’t?”

“I’m not giving her the upper hand.” She felt his glance on her, a keen shift in awareness, like the split second when formless mana becomes a formed spell. “No,” she said slowly, knowing she was speaking as much about them as she was about Leliana. “When I do anything about it, it will be on my terms.”

Hands clasped behind his back, in his customary posture, he advanced on her as soundless as ever. She idly wondered why she never before noticed that he placed one foot precisely in front of the other, as if that detail alone could explain everything else. It was impossible to miss the subtle thrumming of the space between them, ever so faintly echoed by a plucking at the edges of the mark in her hand. This was his secret, magical pull on her senses, as startling now as it had been when they first kissed.

“You’re enjoying this,” he said.  

Intuition, striking in the instant: “And you’re not?”

Her gut coiled in response to his mouth lazily twisting at the corners, neither smirk, nor smile, but something altogether alien and feral. “I said no such thing, vhenan.”

“Charmer.”

“Am I staying, then?”

If only he would have kissed her again, she would have been thankful to tumble in the direction of his choosing, but this— This said he acknowledged her reserve, and wanted her to be the one who closed that distance. Which she could not do, in defiance of the desperate and lonely ache for him, spreading outward into her limbs like the surreal weightlessness of fever.

“Not tonight” she said at length, hating the sound of her own voice. Then, with the slightest of nods to the pile of reports on her desk, “I still have a lot of reading to do.”

“Be well, my heart,” he said, and pressed his lips above her right eyebrow. Not a kiss, exactly. Then, he was gone.

#

The rest of the week managed to remain uneventful. Leliana and Josephine still hadn’t reached complete agreement on the details of Inquisition’s eventual finery, but whatever arguments existed about the finishing touches weren’t made with any particular force.

Llyrae briefly sought to amuse herself with asking for Vivienne’s opinion, although she found the First Enchanter’s thoughts on the matter too sensible to provide the desired distraction. Pedigree, whether of blood or influence, would be of foremost importance to the court; the Inquisition had precious little of the former, and the court was too insulated to properly recognize the latter. Dress too richly, and be derided as pretenders; too modestly, and be seen as lacking ambition. By the time she finished tea and crumpets with Vivienne, the Venatori plot against the Empress had the shabby air of an errant afterthought.

Not that she’d neglected to consider the merits of not stopping the plot against Celene, or of throwing Gaspard to the wolves. Leliana’s reports had been a study in honesty at its most brutal: Celene massacred the Halamshiral alienage with fire and sword, Gaspard sponsored scholars eager to prove that intercourse with elves was foul bestiality. A muscle worked in her jaw each time she thought of it, and she took bleak pride in having the willpower to consider all Halamshiral plans rationally. The only missing piece was the altered copy of the play Celene had been attending the night she swept out of the theater to march on her elven subjects. All she had was hearsay, and Llyrae wanted more than gossip and rumor.

She had enough uncertainty as it was. Solas, for instance.

Her mornings were still spent drinking tea and watching him paint, but neither one of them braved anything more perilous than hand contact. Their conversation was easy enough, as it had always been, and their regard for one another clear. Still, there were times when she could feel him watching her, and there were times when she realized, too late, she hadn’t kept the speculation in her glance well hidden. They were, in fact, doing nothing short of circling each other to no discernible end.

The situation afforded her time to think, though she couldn’t claim to enjoy their stalemate. She'd won a hint, nothing more. Only one thing was certain: Solas excelled at evading direct questions. She’d have to fit together the pieces he let slip, find answers on her own.

That was one reason why she scribbled his name at the bottom of the Halamshiral party list during the last strategy meeting before ball plans were finalized.

Leliana glanced at the paper. “Are you certain?” she asked, as expected.

“Does the cachet of Master 'Hard in Hightown' Tethras and Princess 'Right Hand' Pentaghast not suffice? If not, I’ll mix things up by taking Bull and Cole. Or better yet: Sera.”

“I meant—”

“Solas. Yes, I know. Here’s the thing: the Inquision closes rifts, so it can boast a rift expert.”

“I meant,” continued Leliana, “that Solas may not wish to go.”

“He’ll go.”

“As you say, Your Worship.”

“And the copy of that play?”

“My agents will have it to us by the time we reach Lydes.”

“Then it’s settled.”

Solas, however, didn’t voice the objections Leliana had supposed, and that Llyrae herself half-expected. His reaction amounted to a swift glance her way, before marking the date of the ball in the margins of a page covered in his sharp, elegant hand.

She gleaned another truth in that moment, all the more dangerous, since it bared herself to herself: she wanted him there not just to measure responses, but also because his presence was a pocket of calm in all the chaos. In spite of all the suspected half-truths, the questions without foreseeable answers, and the sleepless nights spent trying to decode hidden meanings, Solas grounded her, whatever his motives. She didn’t want to consider what it meant to find solace with an illusion, but she couldn’t deny that she had no wish to face Halamshiral without him. Whoever—whatever—he was.

She could. She would if she had to.

She’d rather not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't a fan of the way the game handled Celene's and Gaspard's respective backgrounds (and Briala's, for that matter). So much essential information left out on the assumption that players would be familiar with the events of _The Masked Empire_ ; Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts is almost a completely different quest without that knowledge, particularly for Lavellan.
> 
> Next chapter: a play script, closeness in unlikely places, and explanations long overdue.


	3. Some Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All planning and no play makes Lavellan a tightly wound girl. Solas to the rescue.
> 
> Some _Masked Empire_ spoilers.

“That’s it?” Llyrae held the pages inches away from her face, and scanned them for what felt like the hundredth time. It was a crumpled actor’s copy, rakish with ink stains and cryptic blocking notes in the margins, and it rendered the gilt curlicues and redundant tassels of the suite Duchess Caralina had put at her disposal during their stop in Lydes that much more affected.

“What is what, vhenan?”

Just roused from sleep by her pacing, Solas managed to look oddly comfortable amid seafoam silk sheets and floral jacquard covers. She inwardly cursed the moment when she had decided that asking him to share her room was a good idea. She knew she’d be up reading the script Leliana’s agent had acquired, so why had she insisted?

Caught between the fact of her need and the facts of the page, she found herself unable to answer him. Magic strained against her control, flailing to shape her mana into jagged arcs of lightning. Once more, her lips compressed with fury around the question: “That’s bloody it?”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Not even pacing eased the cold knot of rage deep inside her.

“It’s strange that you’re so angry over unclear expectations.”

She shot him a raw look, but found nothing contentious in his expression. He sat on the edge of the bed, still blinking off the sleep her agitation had disturbed, but giving her his full attention.

“I don’t know,” she repeated. Celene had slaughtered an entire alienage, so why did Llyrae think the Empress’s reasoning would be complicated? She gave the script another glance, then tossed it away as if it were some species of disgusting insect that had somehow found its way in her hand. “Just not this,” she said.

Solas retrieved the pages from the floor, placed them on the gilt dressing table she’d turned into a desk earlier that evening, then made himself comfortable on the plush, rose velvet tabouret that aspired, unsuccessfully, to be a chair. “You must have expected something,” he said, propping his elbows on the table and biting back a yawn.

“I know what I didn’t expect,” she spat. “I didn’t expect the Empress of Orlais to get chased out of the theater by ham-fisted insinuations.” When he said nothing, she continued, “And I certainly didn’t expect her to torch an entire alienage just to disabuse detractors of the notion she might have taken an elven lover. It doesn’t even make sense. Slaughter hundreds of elves just to prove what? That you’d never fuck anyone you’d kill. That’s idiotic.”

“There’s nothing unusual about Celene’s methods,” he said evenly. “Posturing at the expense of common lives is one of rulership’s well loved tenets.”

Anyone else expressing that opinion would have pushed her into open confrontation. As it was, the knowledge Solas never made idle statements nudged her mood in the opposite direction. She forced her breathing into a regular pattern, and again considered the facts of Leliana’s reports: whispers the Empress was too lenient on elves; an alienage rebelling over a trader’s murder by a noble; Celene unwilling or unable to dispense the justice the situation demanded; political rivals profiting off her indecision; the rebels dead after a bad night at the theater.

Before reading that play she’d viewed Celene’s actions as little more than political self-preservation. It didn’t make the massacre any less horrific; only gave it its proper place in the history of injustices humans had committed against her people. Realizing the Empress panicked after being publicly taunted with having an elven lover imbued Celene’s response with an aura of desperation. To provoke her into quitting the theater to march on the dispossessed, the insinuation had to have struck something personal.

“No,” she said. The rumors about Ambassador Briala Leliana had brought up at the last strategy meeting were looking more and more like fact. “If you respond to rumor by fighting its substance, you acknowledge its power. The rebels had no proper organization, no weapons, no consistent supplies. Even with the alleged reinforcements from Lydes, they were still outclassed. Celene panicked,” she added, her lips curling in a bitter grimace, “and fumbled her hand.”

“It’s that simple, vhenan?”

“Don’t patronize me. I didn’t say it was simple. I said her game was underplayed.”

“I am sorry if I gave offense, but I am curious to know how you think she could have played it better.”

She scrutinized him for a tense moment. Solas: his glance keen behind half-lidded eyes, his lean, half-naked frame stretched out on that fussy tabouret, his toes half buried in the plush, silken carpet, and he still somehow managed to turn the act of her scrutiny into a matchless display of confidence.

“That’s academic now, isn’t it?” she asked, discomfited. “No, the better question is, if these rumors of Briala being Celene’s lover are as old and dangerous as my Spymaster claims, why didn’t they imperil Celene sooner?”

The corners of his mouth twisted in agreement, a pale ghost of his unsettling not-smile. At his elbow, a fluted porcelain vase, gold rimmed and painted with scenes of saucy intrigue, glimmered in the soft candlelight. “There is that,” he said.

She began pacing again, as if the movement could order her thoughts. Nothing about the Halamshiral ball was appealing, and the weakness that had prompted her to seek Solas’s company even less so. The last time she’d let the visceral need for another’s presence overrule her reason, she’d been a child, fresh to a new clan in the wake of the Arlathvhen. An unfair comparison, perhaps, but not one without merit. Isolation was the shadow that contoured her life.

“Vhenan, stop.” He reached his hand out to her, beckoning. “Please, stop. Come here.”

Reluctance slowed her step, but she approached him and let him draw her close. His thumbs traced lazy whorls across her wrists, the lightness of the touch more perilous than magic. She longed to fall into his arms, press her ear to his chest, and let his steady heartbeat lull her.

Instead, a question, sharp as her staff blade: “Why did you stay with me tonight?”

“You asked.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.” His open glance sought hers. “But that’s not what you wish to ask.”

And there it was, the inevitable strike. The circling was over, and Solas caught her unawares. She nodded, refusing to let her panic-dry mouth stumble over the long suppressed demand for an explanation. One word, just shy of accusation: “Harellan.”

“I see.” He placed a light kiss on her palms in turn, his lips lingering over the now faintly tingling mark. “Those are not pleasant memories for me, vhenan. My mistakes are many. The thing is, I’ve felt this guilt so long that it has become me.” He paused, as if listening to a faraway sound only he could hear. “I don’t know how to lay bare this part of myself for another, and you are the only one I could envision letting in.”

“Envision.” The word had a peevish shape on her tongue.

“Even so, losing you would break me. Nightmare knew that. No better way to prey on us both than to turn my pain against me, and against you. You can’t believe it chose its words without knowing what they’d do to you, what it does to me to see you troubled so.”

A shiver iced its way down her spine. There was no mistaking his emotion. His explanation was so sound, she tamped down the rising conviction he was offering yet more truth complicated by omission. It’s what she would say, were she— No, she didn’t want to think it, no matter how superstitious her aversion to naming her suspicion was. Perhaps she was mistaken.

“Oh, Solas.” His name was a sigh. It had, at least, the virtue of sounding contrite.

He kissed her mark, and bit lightly on the fleshy pad beneath her thumb. Sylaise’s mound, he’d called it with a honey drip of a smile the first time he’d done it, and the memory was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. When he pressed her palm to his cheek, she found herself dizzy with yearning for his touch, his taste in her mouth, the whisper of magic on her skin whenever he was near. Around them, the air hummed.

“Let’s get out of here, vhenan,” he said.

“Now?”

“We’ll be back before first light to keep up appearances. Besides, the Duchess will doubtlessly have those strawberry cream pastries for breakfast, and it would be criminal to miss them.”

“And how do you propose we get out and back in unnoticed?”

A half smile, tinged with expectation. “I know some tricks,” he said.

Of course he did. Was there any surprise that she’d been outplayed? Part of her wanted to stop and take notes. By dragging her doubts out in the open, he’d forced her to choose between hiding behind speculation and wandering half-blind down the path he offered.

She would never know whether she was bold or foolhardy when she said, “Show me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: a date. There might be fluff involved.


	4. Now You See Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two nerds on a date. Mage nerds. On a date. There's some date action, there's some self-reflection action. Metaphors may be involved.

His hand on hers was warm as he pulled her closer, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, glittered in his eyes like an impossible question. It reminded her of the cocky swagger with which the clan’s young hunters would invariably drag back their first kills, ready for praise and cheers, and to see even the hint of that expression on Solas’s calm features sent unabashed excitement coursing through her. This was unlike anything she’d seen from him, and it seemed to her in that moment—his arm around her, the other gesturing a fluid motion—that she had waited a long time to finally glimpse this Solas.  
  
“Here,” he said.  
  
The quiet susurrus of magic rippled around her, then the faint tingle of the veil of her skin, a pale echo of fade step’s heady rush. Her mark prickled. The room’s aggressive gilt seemed to lose a fraction of its bite, its cacophony of tassels and curlicues muted in the tensing air.  
  
“This is—” She didn’t keep the wonder out her voice, though it would trouble her to say whether it was impulse or calculation. “What is this?”  
  
“A spell I devised some time ago. It comes in handy on occasion.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
That mouth quirk again. “Stay close.”  
  
It seemed to her that hidden in his unspoken offer was an oblique answer to the questions plaguing her since Adamant, and like everything that Solas did and said, it required patience to unravel. She looped her arm around his waist. Yes, for this she could, while it lasted, forget about the Venatori and Orlais.  
  
They stepped out into the quiet hallway, from silken carpet to polished marble floor, and the air’s subtle tensing went with them. Absorbed in trying to sense its origin—Solas called it into existence, yet it didn’t emanate from him—she almost didn’t notice the Duchess’s majordomo rounding the corner. She stopped, groping about for an explanation, but Solas gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.  
  
“Wait,” he whispered, his breath warm against her hair.  
  
The majordomo, glance fixed ahead of him, passed by them, unconsciously moving aside though they were in his path, and continued on toward the ducal suite and whatever summons called him.  
  
“He didn’t see us! He even—” She broadly mimed avoidance. “How?”    
  
He offered a cryptic quirk of the lips. On her shoulder, she could feel the idle circling of his fingers. She was suddenly aware of the warmth of his body next to hers.  
  
“Oh. Oh, I see.”  
  
“Do tell.”  
  
“Distract me with a puzzle so I relax before the ball.”  
  
“Interested?”  
  
She leaned into him, backing him against the wall. The shimmer of magic around them heightened the chateau’s nighttime stillness, and made their closeness seem both right and illicit. None of their discreet outings at Skyhold felt this thrilling. She held his glance, noting the swift dilation of his pupils as she pressed her hips into his. Llyrae smiled: “All right, I’m game.”  
  
“So what would you say this is?” he whispered in her ear, nipped at its blade.  
  
“Wicked man,” she laughed, choosing to ignore the ambiguity of his question. “Raising the stakes.”  
  
He cupped her rear, planted a trail of kisses along her neck. “Just evening the playing field, vhenan.”  
  
She bucked against him, bit his shoulder, filled her hands with the firm swell of his ass. If he hadn’t been hard before, he was now, and she found herself craving the feel of him like never before. Were her suspicions a worthy trade-off for the miserly frequency of their affections? All that time gone forever, leaving in its wake a slew of unanswerable questions and this burning hunger for him savaging her.  
  
And yet. Yet: the questions, their intuited answers, were a kind of fuel for her fire, were they not? This limbo of theirs only kept her from having to act.  
  
Sobered, she willed her attention back to the spell’s energy fluctuations. Its boundary seemed constant, if uneven, and it didn’t feel like entirely unfamiliar magic. Not fade step, though, something less frantic, and easier to sustain. Further, something capable of plucking at her mark. Her focus wavered. He’d worked his hands inside her tunic, one raking the small of her back, the other closing around her breast. “An altered fade cloak?” she managed.  
  
“A logical supposition.”  
  
“But incorrect.”  
  
“Indeed.” An undefinable look glimmered in his eyes. “Shall we to the gardens?”  
  
She straightened her clothing, glad for the respite, and mentally retraced the night’s events as they walked, as if inventorying them would tell her what had shifted. Because something between them had shifted, some strange undercurrent had found a new channel and it was gathering momentum toward— Toward— The salt tang of seawater bloomed in her nostrils, and she had the momentary impression of roaring water sweeping away ancient stone walls. The gentle pressure of Solas’s hand on her hip brought her back.  
  
She cleared her throat. “That was strange,” she said at last. Mana pooled uneasily within her, as in the wake of a spell.  
  
“Strange how?”  
  
Llyrae filed away the fact he hadn’t asked after the strangeness. Another clue, then. She tightened her grip around his waist as she shifted her awareness to the wavering boundary around them. A pressure along its edge met her perception, and with it, a near imperceptible pull at her mana—nothing she’d notice if she were not looking for it. Whatever it was. She nevertheless felt closer to an answer, and with that certainty came a bright flush of triumph.  
  
“Nothing so obvious as an altered spell,” she said. “Of course, you would have learned this— in the Fade, so—” She let the sentence hang between them.  
  
“It wouldn’t be the same as what you were taught, no.”  
  
“Even as it manipulates the same basic forces.”  
  
“True.” He placed a soft kiss on her temple. “Any other guesses?”  
  
She broke away from him and darted ahead, past the tall columns of the inner courtyard, and into the moonlit garden, her senses alert to changes in the magic. There. A slight hum as she left the effect behind, followed by—a lessening? Her elation at nearing an answer seemed less acute.  
  
“I’d rather be certain than guess,” she said in his probable direction.  
  
Although she couldn’t see him, she might sense the spell’s location with the mark, still tingling in response to its proximity. Eyes closed, she let her awareness drift along the jagged cicatrix in her hand, used its restless prickling  as she would a compass. It was not unlike the light hum on her skin that accompanied the activation of ancient artifacts, and if she was correct—  
  
“And how shall you acquire certainty, vhenan?”  
  
She’ll remember this moment: the wolf’s breath scalding the back of her neck, and the sweet ache of anticipation ready to unravel her.  
  
“Perhaps I shan’t.” She bent her head just enough to expose the nape of her neck. “Banal nadas.”  
  
Had she not been waiting for it, she’d have missed the momentary hitch in his breath. One heartbeat, two, before she turned around, grinning. Her instincts were correct: he’d been about to bite her. She held his glance a long moment. Something else stirred, an intent rolling off him, reaching for her with a hunger as keen and insistent as her own. There was only one place she had encountered a sharpness of feeling as intense as this; she paused to formulate the thought, but then—  
  
But then her face was in his hands, and his mouth was on hers, and she was making indistinct sounds, giving in as if he had every right to claim this frenzied kiss of her, his tongue hot and unrelenting. The air hummed, charged. She would have staggered back had they not been clinging to each other. Above them, the sky brimmed with stars, somehow brighter than before.  
  
“That was— different,” she stammered.  
  
“Llyrae—”  
  
“Stop talking.” Her name in his mouth made her knees weak. “Kiss me again,” she said, but what she meant was _open me up_ , and there was no disguising the need in her voice.  
  
His smile was slow and, it seemed to her, it held a trace of shyness. Their lips touched as if they were the only lovers in the world, and this was their first fated meeting. An image of a wild and impossible red-centered bloom overcame her, its dark petals unfurling with dread certainty. Their perfume seemed to still cling to her as the kiss ended.  
  
“You felt that too?” It was less of a question than it sounded.  
  
“Perhaps not as you did. But yes.”  
  
“The spell doesn’t cause that.”  
  
“It does not.”  
  
“But it is a side effect. The spell lets you walk between realities unseen, slip a bit of the Veil around you. We’re still here, just cloaked, and close enough to the Fade that a bit of it seeps through.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“You were right, it was a good distraction.” And, before he had a chance to respond, she pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, whispered against his perfect lush mouth: “Thank you for sharing it with me.”  
  
“You are welcome. Feeling better?”  
  
She smiled and pulled him along through an asymmetrical arrangement of embrium and lavender. A narrow path bordered by fragrant gardenia bushes led away into a wild and leafy nook, where pale moonlight outlined the stark silhouettes of a small copse of gnarled trees.  
  
“I felt it as I slept,” he said, nodding ahead. “This portion of the gardens seems to have been left alone, groomed only to resemble…itself.”  
  
“That, or Celene’s fad for all things mystical caught on with the previous dukes.”  
  
His only answer was a raised eyebrow, as he guided them toward the trees. Their bemossed branches twisted into improbable yet graceful shapes that suggested limbs linked together in a circling dance. The Veil felt thinner here, and she realized that he had ended the spell’s effect.  
  
“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant lately,” she said. Overdue and insufficient, her apology, but there it was.  
  
“You’ve been busy.”  
  
“That’s not an excuse. I let Nightmare get to me—” She paused for a breath, aware she couldn’t tell the truth any more than she wanted to lie. Was it like this for him too? “—because this is complicated, and it is easier to doubt.”  
  
His attention on her was electric. Even the bright moonlight and stars dimmed under its focus. He ran his thumb across her lower lip, and when she met his gaze, she knew she’d never be able to do anything other than chase down the wolf into his perilous and winding maze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know _banal nadas_ is usually translated as "nothing is inevitable," and while "certain" may be a synonym for "inevitable," I also headcanon that word meanings in elven are considerably more fluid, and situational, than in other languages. "Nadas" in this instance literally means "certain" because of the context in which it is used, although it still retains its meaning as "inevitable," along with whatever else in that semantic family it may be called upon to signify. 
> 
> And now that's out of the way, the next big one will likely be a smuttening. It will also not happen until I've either conquered NaNoWriMo, been conquered by it, or am on such a writing streak that that I write a gazillion words a day. So yeah. Probably December.


End file.
